


Safe and Sound

by cant_takethekid



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Vamps (UK Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cant_takethekid/pseuds/cant_takethekid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James had been training for the hunger games his whole life, but now that he’s standing on his platform, waiting for the countdown to end, he’s not sure he’s got what it takes to become the victor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe and Sound

It’s the ninth day of the games, maybe the tenth. James isn’t really keeping count anymore.

They’re sitting in a rare moment of serenity. There hasn’t been any cannon fire for few days, and there has been no sign of any other tributes in the area. Most of their day was spent tending to their fire, hunting for any familiar looking creatures to eat and tending to Bradley and Tristan’s wounds in a small creek at the edge of arena.

Tristan knows his way around any animal, even an unknown one. Brad had shot it out from the sky thinking it was a duck, but it didn’t look like any sort of bird or muttation they had ever seen before. It doesn’t matter to Tristan though. He expertly cleans the animal, leaving almost nothing more than a pile of bones and fur when he’s finished. It will be good to eat meat again. James has never wanted for anything in his district, especially not food.

“So you actually train for the hunger games?” Bradley asks after they have all finished eating. He settles himself onto James’s lap while Connor leans on a nearby tree to keep watch. Tristan sits down next to him. “Why would you want this?”

He had never really thought about it. Training for the games was just something almost everyone did where he grew up in district two.  And he liked the training, he liked feeling strong, but even when his targets were dummies filled with sand he spent more time aiming for their arms or legs than at the spot marked with an x where their hearts would be.

His answer to Bradley’s question is simple. “It was either volunteer for the games now, or begin my training as a peacekeeper next year.”

“I’m glad you’re not going to be one those assholes.” Connor chimes in from his spot by the tree.

The remark makes him laugh for some reason, just a little bit under his breath, but when Bradley joins in he’s cackling in James’s lap, one arm clamped on his stomach and the other reaching to cover his mouth so they won’t heard by any of the other contestants.

Tristan is laughing too, but Connor doesn’t join in until Tristan leans in and whispers something into Connor’s ear.

James assumes it’s a joke about district two, because both of them refuse to repeat what had been said when James asks why they’re laughing so much.

**

Cannon fire jolts James awake.

There are a few moments of silence, then there’s a second blast and a third.

He looks over to Connor, who is now holding his fingers up, probably trying to figure out how many tributes are left.

 “Three.” Tristan says to Connor with an exhausted sounding voice. The cannons must have woken him up too. “Three left in the arena, not including us.”

James looks down at Bradley, who still has his head in his lap. He stirs for a moment, but stays asleep.

Connor had been on watch for the hour. He and James have been taking shifts, letting Tristan and Bradley rest.

They need it the most. They’re still in pain from their injuries, James can tell, but they’re trying their hardest to conceal it, and he hadn’t been injured at all when he was with the careers.

 “I’m going to find more kindling for the fire.” Connor says. “I won’t go far.”

Connor begins walking toward what James thinks is the center of the arena, and after a few seconds Tristan stands up and trails him. He really won’t be much help to Connor with only one fully usable arm, but Connor doesn’t stop him.

James looks down at Bradley and wonders how he can sleep so soundly here. If James can barely sleep with someone keeping watch, how on earth is Bradley sleeping with his head in the lap of someone who should have killed him days ago?

He decides Bradley’s ability to put so much trust in him must come from district twelve, because he’d never seen anything like it in district two. He’s a little bit envious of brad right now, not only of his ability to sleep through anything, but his ability to trust. James doesn’t think he would ever be able to trust a stranger so much.

James can feel his eyelids getting heavier by the second. He manages to scoot himself into a more comfortable position against his tree without waking up Bradley. His eyes are just fluttering shut when a blood curdling scream comes from Connor.

James is up on his feet immediately. Bradley’s head hits the ground and the impact finally startles him awake.

“Was that Connor?”  Bradley asks with a desperate look at James and then stands and starts to run towards the source of the scream, “Connor!”

A cannon fires. 

James grabs Bradley by one arm, but he tries to pull it away, still trying to save Connor.  James knows he can’t let him go, that Bradley will be killed by whoever had killed Connor. 

There’s another scream, Tristan this time, so piercing and full of pain James thinks his ears might begin to bleed.

The second cannon sounds.

“We have to help them!”

James doesn’t understand. Bradley should be glad right now, they were put into this arena with one simple goal: to kill everyone else. Become the victor. Make your district proud.

And then it hits him. He could kill Bradley so easily right now.

It would be one less tribute to worry about, one step closer to victory for district two. His fellow district two tribute had already been killed. Everything was up to him.

But he couldn’t do that, could he? Bradley trusts him.

In any other situation, would they have been friends? What if they had both grown up in district two? Or twelve?

It would be so, so easy for him to kill Bradley right now.

He grabs Bradley from behind, knocking him to the dirt, wrapping one arm around his middle and using his free hand to cover his mouth. Whoever had gotten Tristan and Connor couldn’t be far. “We have to stay quiet, Bradley.”

They could have been friends.

Bradley is still yelling but his muffled words don’t make sense anymore. He’s kicking at James in his shins and scraping at his arms with his fingernails, anything to make James let go.

“They’re gone, Bradley,” James says. “They’re gone.”

It takes a few minutes, five, or maybe ten before Bradley settles down and James can be sure that he won’t take off running into the woods if he lets go.

 “At least we didn’t have to kill them ourselves.” James says after a while.

**

When they hear another cannon the next morning, they decide to move away from the spot where they had set up camp with Connor and Tristan. With so few people left in the games, someone was going to start looking for them soon enough. Staying in the same place isn’t going to be safe for much longer.

Bradley still has his bow and a few arrows left, but James had lost his machete days ago. “We should go back to the cornucopia. There’s got to be some weapons left there.” He says. Bradley agrees to go, of course.

They have one last muttation meal around their small fire before they pack up their camp and start their journey back to the cornucopia. They make sure to take a different path than Connor and Tristan had.

It doesn’t take long for them to get to the center of the arena. Maybe the game makers are moving things around for them to speed up their meeting with the lasting tributes. What they have been doing for the past few days can’t have been very interesting for the viewers back in the districts.

 There are still a few weapons lying near the opening of the cornucopia. James spots a spear and starts to jog towards it, but slows to a stop when he sees district seven’s tribute come into view. He’s sitting down with his back leaning against the cornucopia, like he’s been waiting for them to come and find him. The body of another tribute is lying facedown a few feet away.

James had gone far enough that he can barely see Bradley out of the corner of his eye. But he can tell that he’s already got the string of his bow pulled tight, arrow pointing directly at seven. It’s so much like the time they first met in the arena. The only difference is that James is the defenseless one now.

“I wish I could have killed you days ago,” seven says. He’s got his axe clutched in his right hand, still dripping with the blood of the tribute he had killed before they had arrived. He stands up slowly, like he has all the time in the world.  He then throws his axe in James’s direction, taking him by surprise, but James is quick enough to dodge it. James hears Bradley release his arrow, hears the rush of air as it just barely misses him and lands directly into district seven’s heart.

James stands still until he hears the cannon fire. He almost turns and congratulates Bradley on his excellent shot before he realizes that he and Bradley are now the only two contestants in the arena.  James is weaponless, but Bradley has his bow. He keeps his back turned to Bradley to give him an easy shot. He’d rather die at the hands of Bradley than any of the other contestants anyway. No one born in district twelve has won the hunger games yet, so Bradley will be a legend.

When James is still alive after nearly a minute, he finally turns around to face Bradley. It takes a second for James to register what he’s seeing. Bradley is lying down in the dirt almost motionless, with blood gushing from his shoulder. He shouldn’t have moved. He should have let seven’s axe hit him instead.

“Bradley?” is all he can say.

James drops to his knees next to the boy. He wants to say he’s sorry, to say _anything_ , but his lips aren’t working. He was ready to die and let Bradley win just a second ago, but now Bradley’s the one bleeding out on the ground.

 “I’ve had worse, James. Doesn’t even hurt.” Bradley says. His eyes flutter shut for a moment and James silently hopes that this is it, but they open up again, staring directly into James’s. “You’re going to be the victor.”

“I can still…don’t…you can survive this, brad.” James is lying through his teeth, and he knows it.

James gently places Bradley’s head in his lap so he’s comfortable, and he uses his jacket as a blanket to cover him up. Bradley must be cold because he’s losing so much blood.  Bradley starts babbling about his life in district twelve in a raspy voice. He describes little details about his sister, his illegal pet dog, and what it was like to work in the mines.

To James, it feels like hours are passing instead of minutes. “Want to hear a secret, James?” Bradley asks. What a stupid question, he thinks, of course I do. But his words are getting stuck in his throat again, so he just nods his head, takes brad’s hand and squeezes his fingers gently and hopes he knows that means yes.

 “I love to sing. I always annoyed everyone with my singing in the mines.” Bradley begins to smile as wide as he always does. There he goes again, doing the opposite of what he should. Laughing while he’s being hunted, grinning when he’s minutes away from death. His smile is only interrupted by a quick cough. When he starts to smile again, his teeth are stained red from blood. “I even wished I was a mockingjay sometimes. Then I’d be able to sing whenever I wanted.”

James doesn’t even know if he can sing. He’d never even tried for fear of being caught and punished. Future victors or peace keepers don’t need to sing.

“Can you sing something for me?” James asks. Bradley nods his head, and then pauses for a second, like he needs to pick the perfect song to sing to James.

Bradley starts to sing a song James has never heard before, a song that comes from district twelve. His voice is weak, but still beautiful. The song has a simple tune with simple lyrics, so he tries to memorize every bit of it as it leaves Bradley’s lips.

When Bradley finishes the song, mockingjays that James hadn’t realized were listening start to repeat it, slowly turning it into a round. Soon Bradley’s voice is filling every inch of the arena.

It sounds gorgeous. 

“That’s really something, isn’t it?” Bradley whispers so quietly that James almost doesn’t hear it. The fingers that were gripping onto James’s so tight just a second ago go slack.

“Yeah, it is.” James replies.

The mockingjays are still singing Bradley’s song when he finally closes his eyes and the last cannon goes off.

**Author's Note:**

> That’s it! Thanks for reading!  
> I hope you enjoyed the product of procrastination during finals week lol  
> This is the first time I've written an au like ever, so feedback is very, very welcome. Tell me what you think in the comments!  
> There is a first part to this that answers all the unexplained things (like how James got separated from the careers, seven’s beef with James and brad and so on) but I’m not super happy with it so I’m probably not going to finish and post it unless anyone wants to read it haha 
> 
> (Also if I anyone was curious, Connor is district six and Tristan is district ten.)
> 
> :) <3


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